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Originally published in Science Express on 23 March 2006
Science 28 April 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5773, pp. 561 - 563
DOI: 10.1126/science.1125150
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Reports

A Population of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt

Henry H. Hsieh* and David Jewitt

Comets are icy bodies that sublimate and become active when close to the Sun. They are believed to originate in two cold reservoirs beyond the orbit of Neptune: the Kuiper Belt (equilibrium temperatures of ~40 kelvin) and the Oort Cloud (~10 kelvin). We present optical data showing the existence of a population of comets originating in a third reservoir: the main asteroid belt. The main-belt comets are unlike the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud comets in that they likely formed where they currently reside and may be collisionally activated. The existence of the main-belt comets lends new support to the idea that main-belt objects could be a major source of terrestrial water.

Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hsieh{at}ifa.hawaii.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Comparison of Comet 81P/Wild 2 Dust with Interplanetary Dust from Comets.
H. A. Ishii, J. P. Bradley, Z. R. Dai, M. Chi, A. T. Kearsley, M. J. Burchell, N. D. Browning, and F. Molster (2008)
Science 319, 447-450
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